Multi-Lingual Squeak, Cathedrals, Bazaars and Fallen Cities.

Hannes Hirzel hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch
Sat Mar 1 13:01:10 UTC 2003


Daniel,

I vote for putting Eddies proposal on a prominent place on the squeak
foundation swiki and declare it as a long term goal (6..12..18 months).

I have as well added some comments below.

-- Hannes


Daniel Vainsencher <danielv at netvision.net.il> wrote:
> Hi Eddie.
> 
> I understand your concerns, and in the final analysis, probably agree
> multilanguage support is something that should be in the core. However,
> we're not at a point where there's anything to do about MLSQ in the
> core.
> 
> The reason for that is that currently, Yoshiki's work is experimental.


Yoshiki.Ohshima at acm.org writes
>The latest version Nihongo3 and Nihongo4 Squeak are considered to be
>"stable" versions and have been used in many places. 
(Nihongo = "Japanese language" in Japanese")

HH: I do not think you can say their work is more experimental than
other parts of
Squeak; in fact you guides are considering shipping a broken image right
now, with 
an error that almost every Smalltalk in the last twenty years hadn't -
the ability
to compile itself. Proposed reason: A newbie will not notice! (Sic!)

(Side remark: It have accepted the fact that 3.4 will contain a severe
bug
and I'm advocating now for having a 3.5 for the end of the this month).

In fact hundreds of Japanese Squeakers have been using Nihongo for a few
years 
now without us latin-bound script users noticing!

What do you think all these kids on the great photos are working with?
http://homepage.mac.com/younos/PhotoAlbum3.html
http://homepage.mac.com/younos/PhotoAlbum4.html

You can download the image they are working with from
http://squeak.hoops.ne.jp/squeak/SqueakNihongo4.zip




> Since no one understands it (AFAIK) but him and Abe-san, nobody else can
> maintain it. 

No, you have to read the excellent design documentation.
The docu is really extraordinary - if all of the documents would be like
that ....

Yoshiki.Ohshima at acm.org  sent in 4 mails regarding this topic
three days ago

The most important one is

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/squeak/1550187
 


> Until someone goes in and breaks it up into pieces we can
> integrate, it'll remain a separate project. Since Yoshiki has stated he
> will not have time to do this in the next few months, I called for
> anyone interested in helping make this happen to step forward. AFAIK, so
> far, no good.


Edmund is just proposes to declare to have international script support
as a long term goal for Squeak. And you Daniel, with a email address
ending with .il - Woudn't it be a great thing to have for example
the support of Hebrew script within Squeak?

Looking for champions | implementers comes later. BTW Edmund is
a PhD student in Computer science I think, has worked as a cs magazine
journalist, reads and writes some Japanese and has been a professional
software tester. Why not delegate the coordination of such an effort to
him?
Asking him does not cost more than a few emails? He could be the 
"product manager" of internationalization. I know that Tedd Blanchard
would probably be interested as well in this thing.

> This means that the integration of Yoshiki's work, right now, will have
> to wait until he has the time to do it, or someone else shows up with a
> serious itch.

It is not the question of integrating  the work of Oshima-san and
Abe-san 
right now - I agree that the structure of the "Squeak development
organization" can not cope with this at the moment. But this can 
change in a few months if properly coordinated.

I second Eddie in his plea to add having international script support
in the core as a long term goal (6..12..18 months).


> Daniel
> 
> Edmund Ronald <eronald at cmapx.polytechnique.fr> wrote:
> > I plead for Multilingual Squeak (call it MLSQ) to become the responsiblity
> > of the core Squeak maintainers. Here's why:           
> > 
> > 1. MLSQ is important for all of us in non US locales. We would wish all
> > Squeak to be locale-agnostic: Any program should run in any locale.
> > 
> > 2. For MLSQ to be transparent, it should therefore not require the
> > programmer to understand any Unicode or other charset or encoding
> > esoterica. MLSQ character processing should ideally isolate the programmer
> > completely from the specificities of any multi-byte encoding.
> > 
> > 3. Clearly, MLSQ needs to be designed carefully by specialists familiar
> > with multi-byte issues. Reliability from the start is important. Therefore
> > a cathedral-like initial design approach, with good documentation by the  
> > likes of Oshima-san and Abe-san makes sense, rather than letting 
> > mods  accrete as it seems has happened with morphic.
> > 
> > 4. However, a Multilingual separate distribution (like Nihongo Squeak), or
> > a loadable add-on, DO NOT MAKE SENSE. Such a separate package will
> > inevitably get out of sync with the current beta, get out of sync with
> > newer add-ons, unnoticed bugs will lie dormant, and people will be too
> > busy to rewrite their US-centric software to ensure compatibility with
> > MLSQ, retroactively, when foreign users demand it.
> > 
> > 5. If MLSQ is part of the core of every new distribution, any
> > incompatibilities of MLSQ with standard tools will become immediately
> > apparent. Furthermore, foreign users will immediately notice any issues
> > with any new version in their own locales, at the alpha beta and gamma
> > stages of each distribution and help nip them in the bud. As all software
> > runs in any locale from the start, writers of add-ons will have bugs in
> > multi-nationalization communicated to them by foreign beta-testers,
> > allowing hackers to fumigate their add-on *before* it reaches maturity.
> > 
> > Which is why, again, I plead for internationalisation to be considered a
> > core feature, to be intended from the start to be handed over to the core
> > maintainers.
> > 
> > Edmund



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